Scott Fitzgerald

Scott Fitzgerald is the Republican majority leader of the Wisconsin state Senate. He is also the former state chair of the American Legislative Exchange Council. He is the brother of Republican Representative Jeff Fitzgerald, who is the Speaker of the Wisconsin state Assembly.

Ties to American Legislative Exchange Council
Sen. Fitzgerald was the former state chair of ALEC and remains a proud member.

When the Madison, Wisconsin newspaper The Capital Times approached Sen. Fitzgerald about the practice of proposing and passing bills (particularly health bills) mirroring ALEC's model legislation, his response was "so what": "Fitzgerald says he has been a proud member of ALEC since he first became a legislator in 1994, and is currently the Wisconsin State Chairman. State lawmakers have always turned to such national organizations for help brainstorming ideas and crafting legislation, Fitzgerald says. 'These groups are about exchanging ideas between different state legislators from around the country to be sure we're not isolating ourselves in Wisconsin,' he tells me. "ALEC claims 2,500 legislative members, a third of all state lawmakers in the country. 'It's very well run, probably a little bit conservative, but many Democrats are members, too,' Fitzgerald says. 'It's a great organization.' "What's so great about it? 'First and foremost, because a lot of the committees crank out what I would consider boilerplate legislation, stuff that's sweeping the nation,' he says. 'Obviously legislators do this all the time, pirate bills from one state that they think is a good idea into another state.'" "Democrats also get ideas and inspiration and copycat legislation from such groups. But some people nervous about ALEC claim there is a difference.... [T]he corporate and wealthy interests behind ALEC (which others note include the billionaire Koch brothers) are far more organized, coordinated, and stealthy than anything we've seen before in this country."

Fitzgerald and Others Use Taxpayer Dollars for ALEC fees
Via an open records request received on May 8, 2011 by the liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now, it was discovered that Fitzgerald’s annual membership fee of $100 was being paid for by taxpayers, rather than out of his own pocket, in 2007 and in 2011.

Scott Fitzgerald Mention in William Cronon Records Request Scandal
In March 2011, William Cronon, a professor of environmental history at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, wrote the inaugaural post on his “Scholar as Citizen” blog entitled “Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin? (Hint: It Didn’t Start Here),” where he discussed the roots of the conservative movement and suggested that ALEC was behind Governor Walker’s union-busting effort. > Two days later, on March 17, the state Republican Party filed an Open Records request for all emails on his university account pertaining to matters raised in his blog, and for any emails written by or to Cronon that mentioned the names of numerous prominent Wisconsin Republicans, including Scott Fitzgerald. The request was widely perceived to be in retaliation against questioning the role of ALEC, and in the words of Professor Cronon, a “way to discourage me from sticking my nose in places [the Republican Party of Wisconsin] doesn’t think it belongs.”

”FitzWalkerstan”
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, along with the Fitzgerald brothers, inspired the new name for the state of Wisconsin given by Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan in a March 10, 2011 blog post, which is now used by activists and progressive journalists such as The Nation’s John Nichols: “FitzWalkerstan.”